In what respect was Japans experience of industrialization closer to that of Russia than to that of the United States or Western Europe?

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5.1 Introduction

Learning for catch-up by any nation and in any age exhibits globally common features as well as locally unique characteristics. Japan’s encounter with the powerful West in the nineteenth century and its subsequent rise as the first non-Western industrialized society is already a thing of the distant past, but the combination of universality and uniqueness was clearly visible there. Meiji Japan’s development was not a story from a different planet. Despite the fact that its industrialization took place in very different internal and external contexts from those facing today’s latecomers, certain basics which are still relevant today were fulfilled as preconditions for successful catch-up. With a proper distinction between what was time invariant and what was specific to this particular case, and with appropriate selectivity and modification, developing countries in the twenty-first century can still gain valuable insights from Meiji Japan’s experiences. No developmental model should be copied directly and without adjustments by any other country, whether it is Japan in the nineteenth century, Korea in the late twentieth century, or Ethiopia at present. In this sense, the lessons of Meiji Japan carry fundamentally the same value and quality as other model nations.

Catch-up always takes place in an international context where a nation is confronted with diverse stimuli and formidable pressure from without. Certain foreign things and systems must be adopted as concrete benchmarks for climbing up the ladder. Broad and pragmatic learning that covers technology, institution building, and policy formulation is required at all levels in the private and public sectors. Moreover, to be successful, catch-up must go beyond just government propaganda to become a national passion embraced by all firms and citizens and driven by a mixture of pride and humiliation. All these features were present in Meiji Japan’s industrialization.

Certain key elements must be present for catch-up regardless of country or age. These constants include competent industrial human resource, competitive domestic enterprises, industrial infrastructure, proper business institutions, and constructive engagement between the state and the private sector. The Meiji government created or strengthened all of these elements. But how these were implemented was quite unique to Meiji Japan. The two prominent features are discussed below. Additionally, the government endeavoured to establish a modern and friendly business environment and macroeconomic stability as a background for industrial catch-up in the context of the late nineteenth century—not perfectly but with a fair amount of success.1

However, external circumstances surrounding Meiji Japan were very different from those of today. This was the age of imperialism and colonialism. Japan’s global integration was forced by the show of American military power, not by the friendly counsel of a well-meaning international organization. There were no donor countries to help latecomers with knowledge acquisition or infrastructure building. All costs for foreign advisers and turnkey projects were borne on the Japanese side which led to a desire for ‘import-substituting’ engineers and technicians as quickly as possible. Under Western pressure, free trade was imposed with tariff rates set to a uniform 5 per cent. Thus, there was little scope for infant industry protection until 1911 when tariff rights were regained. FDI and external borrowing were available, but Japan resisted both for fear of foreign dominance (except for borrowing for war purposes). Investment funds had to be generated domestically. Meanwhile, reverse engineering and copy production were frequently practised until 1900 when the commercial law was revised to protect Western intellectual property rights. Meiji industrialization had to proceed with more self-reliance and greater caution against foreigners’ hostile intentions than is the case today.

Another unique feature of Meiji Japan was the high absorptive capability of Japanese people, enterprises, and government which facilitated rapid technology transfer and internalization with proper local adjustments. Technology learning progressed from simple to complex, and from foreigner dependent to Japanese owned. A large part of this chapter is devoted to describing how this was done in concrete projects, business decisions, and policy measures. Possible reasons for Japan’s high absorptive capacity are explored from a historical perspective. Within fifty years of forced opening, Japan, formerly a backward agro-society, emerged as one of the most advanced economies of the world by the early twentieth century. This internal capacity of Meiji Japan was truly remarkable, and offers a compelling reason for not copying its policies to another developing country, apart from the obvious differences in age and international conditions.

5.2 Rapid Industrialization and Westernization

From the early seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, Japan was ruled by the samurai (warrior) government of the Tokugawa family which governed from Edo (present-day Tokyo). Japan then was an internationally isolated feudal society2 with its production mainly based on peasant agriculture. As the nineteenth century dawned, Western powers began to approach Japan for diplomacy and trade but the samurai government refused to deal with them. Then, in 1853, an American military fleet (the Black Ships) commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry entered the Bay of Edo to demand the opening of Japanese ports with a display of cannon fire. The following year, Japan was obliged to sign treaties of ‘amity’ with five Western powers which permitted port calls by foreign ships. Four years later, in 1858, Japan was forced to conclude ‘unequal’ commercial treaties with the West under which it lost the right to set its own tariff rates or charge foreigners with criminal offences. Through this humiliating experience, Japan found itself a backward nation which was no match for Western economic or military might. A decade of political struggle and military conflicts ensued, which toppled the samurai government and established a new one that considered rapid Westernization and industrialization as paramount national goals. The new Japan was officially ruled by Emperor Meiji but actually was run by former young samurais who ended the Tokugawa rule by military means.

Meiji Japan (1868–1912) set itself the targets of political modernization, industrialization, military build-up, and correcting the unequal commercial treaties. All of these were eventually attained. In less than half a century after the forced opening of ports, it succeeded in vigorously importing Western systems and technology, transforming itself into a ‘modern’ state boasting a Western-style constitution, parliament, laws, courts, cabinet, ministries, military, police, and local governments (Banno and Ohno, 2010, 2013). In the economic arena, an industrial revolution in light manufacturing was achieved in the 1890s (Minami, 1986; Hara, 1999). By the early twentieth century, Japan had overtaken the United Kingdom as the world’s top exporter of cotton textile products. In the military sphere, Japan defeated the Qing Dynasty of China (1894–5) and the Romanov Dynasty of Russia (1904–5), and secured control over Korea and a small part of North-eastern China. As Japan’s political, economic, and military standing rose, Europe and America agreed to revise the unequal commercial treaties in steps with the complete restoration of tariff and court rights achieved in 1911. After the First World War (1914–18), Japan was invited to major international conferences as one of the Big Five along with the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Italy.

Meiji Japan’s emergence from an agro-based backward latecomer to one of the most advanced nations in the world was accompanied by a fast and broad absorption of Western technology and its local adjustments, and high-quality human capital which made this possible.

More specifically, as domestic capability steadily rose, one prominent aspect of Meiji Japan’s technology absorption was progression from easy to complex in both content and method of technology learning (Uchida, 1990). This situation will be amply and concretely demonstrated in the rest of this chapter. Another essential feature was a happy blend of strong private dynamism and (mostly) appropriate industrial policy. This was true not only in the late nineteenth century, but also in the post-Second-World-War period when Japan recorded another rapid growth, this time based on heavy industries and high technology (Ohno, 2018). In both periods, private dynamism was the main engine of growth while policy played an important supporting role. Another unique factor was the long co-existence of traditional and modern industries and their parallel development and interaction (Nakamura, 1997; Odaka, 2000). Old industries from the Edo period were not wiped out by the intrusion of superior Western technology. This was possible partly because Japan and the West belonged to entirely different cultural spheres with dissimilar food, clothing, and housing, and also because Japanese traditional industries selectively adopted new technology to improve and scale up production.

5.3 Historical Background

The natural question is: where did Japan’s private dynamism and relatively wise government come from? For this, a historical perspective is crucial. The answer must be found in the periods leading up to the Meiji period, not just in what the Meiji government did in terms of technology transfer or engineer training. Before delving into concrete ways of technology learning, this section reviews the preconditions for the Japanese industrial revolution which had been prepared before Meiji. It also explains why today’s developing countries are advised not to directly copy the policy menu of Meiji Japan, not only because external conditions have changed greatly since the late nineteenth century but also because many of the latecomers today lack the internal preparation for technology learning which Meiji Japan had.

Umesao (2003) advances a hypothesis that Japan’s unique geographical position generated social dynamism throughout its recorded history of almost two millennia. According to him, Japan—just like Britain—is physically separated from the Eurasian Continent by a narrow strait. This allowed it to import the culture and systems of high civilization with relative ease while avoiding or minimizing military invasion from outside. Enjoying external stimuli under efficient defence, society could evolve continuously without being destroyed or severely damaged by foreign invaders. The Japanese state, which first emerged in the fourth century ce, evolved sequentially from strong central power to decentralization, feudalism, the rise of local economic activities, and finally capitalism, unlike societies on the Eurasian Continent which were prone to attacks and even annihilation by violent nomadic peoples every few centuries. Umesao believes that Japan’s unique geography and the resulting cumulative history prepared conditions for strong economic growth, and that its industrialization proceeded in parallel with that of the West rather than by just copying others.3

Shiba, in historical essays published over 1986–96, points to Japan’s status as an island nation as the major factor shaping the Japanese people, making them curious and eager to accept foreign ideas and objects but only after adjusting them to Japanese tastes and mindset. The other key shaping force identified by Shiba is the samurai spirit whose highest value is honour, not personal gain or family prosperity. Japanese people want to live and die honourably, avoiding shame.

Maegawa (1998) observes that, in general, an encounter with the powerful West often weakens or even destroys an indigenous society but it may also lead to its activation and dynamism. In the world system, the centre (large nations and international organizations) imposes its rules on the peripheries (latecomers), forcing them to adopt the norms created by the strong. The peripheries look helpless and passive in the face of external pressure. However, Maegawa argues that a latecomer is not really weak if it controls the type, terms, and speed of the importation of foreign things, using them to stimulate the existing society for new growth. Even as foreign elements are added, the basic structure of the indigenous society can and should remain intact. A nation that does this is said to manage global integration adroitly. Meiji Japan is regarded as a prime example of this feat, which Maegawa calls translative adaptation.

What is the mechanism by which long and evolutionary history forges a nation capable of absorbing foreign elements effectively without losing national identity? Umesao is reticent on this question, and we can list only some hints (Ohno, 2018). Frequent mergers of domestic and foreign elements make the society unafraid of and resilient to external shocks, and at the same time flexible enough to change. It will also learn appropriate methods and procedures for mixing two cultures. Moreover, the mindsets of both the ruler and the ruled are inculcated by the institutional memory of the long past to admire behaviours that preserve the nation against short-term crises. Heroic deeds are told and re-told through books, poems, songs, and theatrical arts in which the hero laments the cruel fate but selects the action that best serves the nation and its future generations. Japanese people adore Yoshitsune, a young and splendid samurai leader in the twelfth century who won dazzling victories but was cornered by his jealous brother to his tragic death, as a model samurai who performed duties without clinging to self-interest. There are many other heroes and heroines remembered by all generations. Spiritual values such as hard work, honesty, perseverance, high aspiration, sacrifice, and long-term vision are esteemed. Japanese national leaders, government officials, and business people are naturally affected by this socio-cultural tradition.

When feudal Japan was confronted by Western powers in the middle of the nineteenth century, this historically generated national mindset was fully at work.

In politics, the previously uncontested authority of the Tokugawa family began to crumble after the unequal commercial treaties were signed with the West without the emperor’s approval, and domestic opponents of the treaties were brutally suppressed through execution and imprisonment. From around 1860, the legitimacy of the Tokugawa government was openly challenged, leading to several years of intensive debates and fights over new political leadership and the wisdom of foreign trade. Even in this fierce competition, opposing camps often cooperated over a common goal of avoiding colonization by modifying strategies and re-forming partnerships rather than clinging to their original positions with an unwavering determination for mutual annihilation (Banno and Ohno, 2010; Ohno, 2013). The transition from feudal Edo to modern Meiji was achieved with surprisingly low casualties of about ten thousand warriors and soldiers. In contrast, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars resulted in five million deaths, and post-Second-World-War conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Nigeria, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Mozambique, and Sudan each claimed over one million lives. One Meiji journalist wrote: ‘Although both [Japan and France] go from one extreme to the other, our people do so within certain bounds while the French do so outside these bounds’ (Tokutomi, 1889).

Moderation in political and military showdown had several causes. Fights over political leadership and international trade were restrained by the rise of National Study (kokugaku) which strengthened Japanese national identity,4 nationalism against foreign colonizers, the emerging rich and intellectual classes who preferred moderation to extremism, and popular discontent with the outdated policies and governance of the Tokugawa rule. These in turn were the results of the peaceful and steady development of Edo society which nurtured the sense of national oneness for common goals. For these reasons, nineteenth-century Japan could maintain a subtle balance between fierce political competition (dynamism) and ultimate national unity (stability) in the midst of a severe external crisis.

In the socio-economic arena, Edo Japan spawned many important developments which facilitated technology learning and industrialization in the subsequent Meiji period. First, smallholder family agriculture grew in both cultivated area and land productivity. There were active public and private projects for opening new fields and water management, and new farming methods, tools, and organic fertilizers (dried fish) were introduced to boost quality and yields. Second, nationally integrated markets and transport systems for rice (tax base) as well as various cash crops and manufactured products developed. It can be safely said, as price data show, that Edo Japan’s domestic market was highly integrated. Third, commerce, finance, and a wealthy merchant class emerged with Osaka as a national economic centre. Fourth, a large number of pre-modern manufactured goods such as sake, kimonos, ceramics, cutlery, processed food, and natural dye were produced in virtually every han through private effort and public support. Fifth, some regional lords even succeeded in systematically promoting agriculture and manufacturing in their domains and increased tax revenue, even though the central Tokugawa government was largely uninterested in and incapable of such promotion (Ohno, 2018).

On top of all this, education became a national fad from top samurai to commoners. For adults, official and private courses were offered in ancient Chinese literature and philosophy as well as, in later years, Western languages, medicine, and navigation. For children aged roughly seven to thirteen, around twenty thousand unregulated for-profit private primary schools (terakoya) emerged all over Japan where self-appointed teachers taught reading, writing, and arithmetic (abacus) with flexible and individualized curriculums.

Thus, when Japan was prised open for diplomacy and trade in the 1850s by the American Black Ships, its people and institutions were ready to absorb and internalize new technologies and systems presented by the West. It can be said that Japan’s re-encounter with the advanced West occurred just at the right time, when Japanese society had evolved sufficiently and was willing to take up the new challenge of transformative growth. The old policies and systems imposed by the Edo government had become constraints on new growth.

5.4 Early Attempts at Technology Learning

In 1854, the Edo government made its first conscious effort to import pragmatic foreign technology by installing Western-style armaments for coastal defence. Some hans also tried to replicate foreign technology by building furnaces to smelt metals for casting cannons. Scholars of Dutch studies and traditional craftsmen built such furnaces relying solely on descriptions in imported Dutch books, which however were already outdated by the time they were translated.5 Haphazard copy production of steel and arms generally failed. Some hans also test produced Western-style ships and steam engines from Dutch texts, but the technology gap between their results and actual foreign ships visiting Japan was so great that this effort had to be abandoned. Realizing the limitations of learning technology only from books, the central government and some hans reverted to directly importing ships and firearms manufactured in the West after Japan opened up for international trade in 1859.

The results were not so disappointing in cases where technology was transmitted in the presence of foreign instructors. The construction in 1854 of a Western-style wooden ship at Heda port in the Izu Peninsula, where Japanese carpenters worked under Russian naval officers and shipwrights to build a new vessel for Russians to return home, can be regarded as the first successful attempt at on-site technology transfer. The Japanese carpenters absorbed the technology so well that they later became skilled workers in Japanese naval arsenals and private shipyards.

Another notable case was the Nagasaki Naval Training Centre. Established in 1855, it trained the crew of Japan’s first Western-style battleship, the Kanko Maru, which was a gift from the Dutch government. This training project was a joint undertaking of the Dutch navy and the Edo government with daily management entrusted to the former. Five Dutch naval officers trained 167 samurais who had been competitively selected from all over Japan. Courses focused on standard naval training such as navigation, artillery, and the care and maintenance of steam engines. The Japanese crew also received on-the-job training with navigation exercises to Kagoshima. Between 1860 and 1870, the Edo government and a number of han governments imported a total of 166 ships from the West. It was the graduates of the Nagasaki Naval Training Centre and two similar centres subsequently set up in Edo and Hyogo who operated them. The importation of different types of ships enabled the Japanese to compare and enrich their knowledge of warships, engines, and artillery. Similarly, the army of the Edo government acquired skills both through the artillery it imported and the foreign military advisers who trained students.

The Edo government also built the Nagasaki Steel Mill and Shipyard in 1857 and the Yokosuka Steel Mill in 1866 as ancillary facilities for the Nagasaki Naval Training Centre. These facilities, which later became Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard and Yokosuka Naval Arsenal, replicated Western mechanized factory production and transferred technology to the Japanese under the supervision of foreign engineers and technicians. Kagoshima Spinning Mill, established in 1867 by Satsuma Han, adopted a similar approach. These early factories became a model for the Meiji government’s programme which hired foreign advisers for construction and to guide factory operation.

5.5 Foreign Experts and Turnkey Projects

In the early years of Meiji, the new government hired from 300 to 600 foreign advisers in any year on a project contract basis, at considerable fiscal cost, to establish Western-style state-owned enterprises in railways, telegraphy, and silk reeling (Umetani, 1968). Some foreign advisers received salaries higher than that of the Japanese prime minister. Each project recruited a team of foreigners, usually of the same nationality, with various functions, who imported virtually all the materials required to create an exact replica of a foreign model (Kasuya, 2000). These were turnkey projects with a foreign director supervising his fellow countrymen and Japanese workers, with the Japanese side taking over operation and maintenance after project completion.6 Yokosuka Shipyard, Tokyo-Yokohama Railway, Imperial Mint, and Ikuno Silver Mine were examples of such projects. Foreign advisers were also hired individually to fill specific technological needs at government bureaus and agencies as well as industrial, mining, and agricultural projects run by the Home Office and the Hokkaido Settlement Agency. Such individual employment required greater ownership and involvement on the Japanese side than projects entirely entrusted to foreign teams.

These turnkey projects hired Japanese workers only for unskilled or auxiliary tasks. The Imperial Mint was directed by William Thomas Kinder who was dispatched, along with other experts, by the British Oriental Bank to create and manage the mint under a Japanese government contract. Its annual reports were published in Kinder’s name. The official report of the Ministry of Industry’s Telegraphic Service, however, was submitted in the name of the Japanese second-in-command. The Japanese edition of the report claimed that Japanese and foreigners shared duties equally but the English edition stated that the Japanese worked under the supervision of foreigners. The latter was probably closer to the truth, while the former version was designed to please senior ministry officials.

The primary aim of establishing a mint, telegraphic service, railways, and shipyards was to rapidly introduce modern industrial infrastructure comparable to Western models. Given the speed at which the Meiji government wished to build them, it is not surprising that these enterprises were run by a large number of foreigners who managed them in the same way as establishments at home. These early projects did not always consciously aim at transferring technology to Japan.

Western countries also considered it highly desirable for Japan to build infrastructure to Western standards. For foreign diplomats, merchants, and shipping companies, Nagasaki and Yokosuka Steel Mills were indispensable for the repair of their ships. Nagasaki Kosuga Dock and Takashima Coal Mine were additionally created to repair foreign ships and replenish fuel (charcoal) under the management of British merchant Thomas B. Glover. A request for the construction of lighthouses and the telegraph service was made by British Consul General Harry Smith Parkes to the Meiji government. By 1874, British engineer R. H. Branton was commissioned, who assembled an eighty-eight-man strong team of British, Chinese, and Filipino workers that included builders, lighthouse keepers, and boat crews. Branton undertook construction and maintenance with all costs borne by the Meiji government. These lighthouses ensured safe passage for foreign and Japanese ships alike.

In the area of telegraphy, the Edo government signed an agreement with the French government to build a telegraph service in 1866. However, this decision was overturned by the Meiji government which chose, through the mediation of the British Consul General, a domestic service provider. The Danish-owned Okita Telegraph Company was awarded a contract for sole agency. By 1866, two international telegraph lines had been laid from Europe to the Far East via Russia and via the Indian Ocean, with Japanese telegraphic cables connecting them at the end and extending them to Nagasaki and Yokohama, the two port cities with large foreign settlements. This enabled foreign diplomats and merchants in Japan to have easy contact with home.

Japanese government orders for machinery, equipment, and materials brought handsome profits to foreign merchants, who also mediated technology transfer. Jardine Matheson & Co. and the Oriental Bank competed over an order to build and equip the Imperial Mint. When the latter won the contract, it not only imported second-hand equipment from the Hong Kong Mint and sold gold and silver for minting but also provided Japan with management expertise by hiring a British team headed by Kinder. For any such project, foreign merchants would act as middlemen for the import of management and technology by mobilizing engineers and technicians from the home country.

International migration of Western engineers was also behind the prevalence of turnkey projects abroad. As much British industrial infrastructure had been completed by the 1850s, the pace of building railways, ports, and other facilities slowed down, producing a surplus of civil engineers in Britain. Needing work, many chose to migrate to the Continent, then to British colonies and foreign lands such as Canada, India, Australia, South Africa, and South America. Machinery and equipment makers also turned to overseas markets. For British railway contractors, it was customary for a supervisor who received an overseas order to secure all equipment and materials needed, such as train track and locomotives, at home, hire subcontractors and a team of skilled workers, then travel with them to his destination. In 1857, a team of 160 Britons travelled to Argentina to build a railway. A similar team came to Japan thirteen years later to lay the first railway between Shimbashi and Yokohama.

As noted above, technology transfer was not the main purpose of turnkey projects, but the method did provide a good training ground for Japanese workers. It fostered new machine operators, steam engine drivers, steelworkers, and electricians. They often migrated from state-owned enterprises to the private sector or set up their own factories, spreading Western technology that they had acquired and contributing to the creation of Japanese enterprises with modern management knowledge from the 1880s onwards.

As the absorption of Western technology and management progressed, turnkey projects conducted by large foreign teams came to an end in the relatively early years of Meiji. From around 1875, state-owned enterprises stopped hiring such teams and, by 1880, foreign engineers had disappeared from all but a few workplaces. Factories and facilities that had been created under management contracts were now run by Japanese. This shift resulted partly from the strong desire of the Meiji government to ‘import substitute’ engineers so it no longer had to foot the expensive bill. But more important was the speed with which Japanese workers absorbed new practical skills. Japanese enterprises did not need continued foreign help to operate modern and complex equipment which the country had only seen a decade or so before. There were already competent Japanese managers and engineers who could easily replace foreigners.

5.6 Engineering Education

After the departure of the foreign advisers, Japanese engineers assumed the role of internalizing and diffusing Western technologies in Japan. They understood the core Western technology and could put this knowledge to practical use. They collected the latest technical information from abroad and instructed appropriate models to purchasing missions to be dispatched to European and American manufacturers. After a factory was built, they supervised its operation. This smooth transfer of Western technology owed much to the fact that Meiji Japan trained a large number of Japanese engineers to an exceptionally high standard in a short period, a feat that few latecomer countries have been able to emulate. Apart from the turnkey projects mentioned above, industrial training was realized by sending students abroad as well as by establishing domestic institutions for technical education and training.

Early engineers studied Western technology before a formal university and technical education system was established. They can be divided into three types. First, there were Dutch studies scholars from the late Edo period who relied on imported technical books and journals. They worked for Western-style establishments owned by the Edo government or various hans, and later served as engineers for the Meiji government. Oshima Takato, who built the first blast furnace in Japan, Takeda Ayasaburo, who built the star-shaped fort in Hakodate, and Utsunomiya Saburo, who became Japan’s first cement manufacturer, were among them.

Second, there were graduates from technical schools managed and taught by foreigners. They included the Nagasaki Naval Training Centre (1855), the Yokosuka Shipyard School (1870), the Telegraphic Service Technical Training College (1871), the Imperial Naval Academy’s Institute for Maritime Studies (1873), and the Railway Engineering Training Centre (1877). These institutions taught in a foreign language—usually English and sometimes German—and transmitted the knowledge necessary to perform assigned functions so workers could run the business after foreign management left. The graduates later worked as foremen or junior technicians in the Japanese army, telegraphic service, railways, and shipbuilding. For instance, in 1878–80 graduates from the Railway Engineering Training Centre supervised and successfully completed the construction of a railway from Kyoto and Otsu which included tunnelling through Osaka Mountain.

The third group of early Meiji engineers were those who were sent abroad to study by the government. The Ministry of Education and the military selected the best graduates from educational or training institutions for continued study abroad. They proved to be extremely good and hardworking students despite the meagre stipends provided by the government. Returning to Japan, they worked as senior technical experts for government ministries or for the private sector. The very first overseas students were seven men sent to the Netherlands by the Edo government to learn military navigation in 1862. The navy later sent many trainees abroad from the Yokosuka Shipyard School and the Naval Academy to learn shipbuilding and arms manufacture. There were also some who chose foreign education at their own expense, and even others who went abroad without official permission.

By the end of the 1880s, as far as the records show, the government had dispatched around eighty students abroad to be trained as engineers. Of these, twenty-one studied shipbuilding, seventeen mechanical engineering, thirteen civil engineering, ten mining and metallurgy, six arms manufacture, and four studied chemistry. By destination, twenty-eight were sent to the United Kingdom, twenty to the United States, fourteen to France, nine to Germany, and eight to the Netherlands (excluding unknowns, Uchida, 1990). They not only took formal courses at universities but also went to renowned technical schools, received on-the-job training at factories, or had private lessons to broaden their knowledge.

Not many Western universities at that time offered practical technical education or acknowledged its value. In the United Kingdom, only universities in Scotland and London had mechanical and civil engineering chairs prior to the 1840s. It was customary for a British engineer to be trained on site, first working as an apprentice and then as an assistant. Many of the British engineers who migrated abroad had been trained in this way. In France, there were some notable technical institutions such as École Polytechnique, École d’Application, and École Centrale. In Germany, each state boasted a number of technical and vocational schools, including the mining school of Freiberg established in 1765. In the United States, there were few technical education institutions until the first half of the nineteenth century. Boston Tech, which later became Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was founded in the 1860s, and at around the same time Columbia University and Cornell University first offered civil, mechanical, mining, and materials engineering courses. However, these technical institutions and courses were still considered to rank below universities until the end of the nineteenth century. It can be said that the first wave of Japanese overseas students were sent to the right institutions for absorbing practical technical knowledge, and received first-class training on a par with European and American engineers. It is no surprise that they could easily replace foreigners on their return to Japan.

Meiji Japan accepted engineering, along with medicine and law, as one of the new subjects to be studied vigorously. Unlike Western Europe, it did not look down on engineering as an inferior subject of lower academic quality. The early establishment of faculties of engineering at Japanese universities contributed greatly to the country’s technological advance. Meiji Japan selectively imported the latest and best of the engineering education which the West had created through a century of trial and error, and combined them for the best practical—not academic—results. This was initiated with the founding of the Institute of Technology (Kobu Daigakko) in 1871, and courses in applied science and civil and mechanical engineering at the University of Science.

The Institute of Technology was established by the Ministry of Industry to train a cadre of engineers for its mining, railways, telegraphy, and construction bureaus.7 As the ministry did not possess the required technical expertise, it hired Henry Dyer, a British engineer, to run the Institute under a management contract. As rector of the Institute, Dyer was in the fortunate position to be able to design a programme which he considered ideal by integrating theory and practice, a feature that British engineering education lacked. The six-year programme of the Institute included basic training in English and mathematics in the first two years, specialized classroom instruction in the next two years, and internship at various bureaus of the Ministry of Industry under the supervision of foreign engineers in the final two years. On graduating, young engineers were expected to assume positions within the Ministry of Industry. At the University of Science, a smaller number of graduates found employment at the Home Ministry, the Imperial Mint, and other establishments. Three other imperial universities founded in the Meiji period—Kyoto, Tohoku, and Kyushu—were equipped with a faculty of engineering from the outset.

These faculties of engineering were not research oriented but dedicated solely to transmitting Western engineering knowledge to Japanese soil. Textbooks were all foreign, and many of the lectures and examinations were conducted in English or German. The journals published by the Societies of Industrial, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering devoted many pages to overseas mission reports and excerpts from foreign journals.

Establishment of schools to supply mid-level industrial instructors and factory supervisors was proposed by Gottfried Wagener, a hired German engineer, and Tejima Seiichi, a Ministry of Education official. Tokyo Shokko Gakko (Tokyo Craftsmen School, later renamed Tokyo Kogyo Gakko or Tokyo Industrial School) was the first to be established in 1881. It selected students aged 16 to 17 through exams and school records. Courses were first offered in mechanical engineering and chemical engineering with other subjects added later. In early years, special courses were also taught on how Western technologies should be adapted to upgrade indigenous Japanese industries such as textiles, ceramics, and brewing. Unlike the Institute of Technology, all the instructors were Japanese except Wagener who taught ceramics and glass making. The school initially faced administrative and financial problems but these were overcome around 1890 as Tejima took over the top management role. In 1897, under the Technical Schools Act, it was formally recognized as an industrial high school. Tokyo Kogyo Gakko became Japan’s leading institute for producing industrial instructors, factory managers, engineers, and entrepreneurs. When its campus in central Tokyo was destroyed by the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, the school relocated to O-okayama where the Tokyo Institute of Technology is today.

Apart from the Tokyo campus, publicly run industrial schools were created in Osaka (1901), Kyoto (1902), Nagoya (1905), Kumamoto (1906), Sendai (1906), Yonezawa (1910), and Akita (mining course only, 1910), making a total of eight schools by the end of Meiji. Subsequently, twenty-three more industrial schools were opened by the 1940s. After the Second World War, most of them were converted to faculties of engineering of national universities, and many privately run industrial schools were also established. Education offered at industrial schools was more limited in scope than that offered at the faculties of engineering at universities, but student quality was high. They attracted good students who could not afford to attend a university. While university graduates normally assumed official or academic positions, industrial school graduates went to factories and became core engineers.

Table 5.1 shows the number of Japanese engineers by type of education from 1880 to 1920. In early Meiji, the number of recognized engineers was fewer than a hundred which caused a severe shortage of experts who could understand and adopt Western technologies. Subsequently, university-educated engineers and industrial school graduates grew greatly in number. By the turn of the century, engineers employed in the private sector outnumbered those in government offices.

Table 5.1

Number of Japanese engineers by type of education

Source: Uchida (1990), p. 281.

The sectoral distribution of engineers tells us about the leading industries of Meiji. At the end of the Meiji period in 1911, among all engineers employed in the private sector 513 (18.0 per cent) were in the mining sector, 300 (10.6 per cent) were in textiles, 250 (8.8 per cent) were in shipbuilding, 231 (8.1 per cent) were in power and gas, 186 were in commerce (6.5 per cent), 149 (5.2 per cent) each were in railways and food processing, 106 (3.7 per cent) were in general machinery, and 104 (3.7 per cent) were in electrical machinery,

It is noteworthy that the commercial sector also employed engineers. During Meiji, sogo shosha, or general trading houses such as Mitsui, Okura, and Takada played a crucial role in transferring technology to Japanese corporate customers. They made foreign trips, established overseas branches, collected technical information from academic journals, helped their customers to choose appropriate technologies and foreign manufacturers, and assisted in ordering, transporting, installing, and operating the equipment. They also mediated technical cooperation agreements between Japanese and foreign firms, as explained in Section 5.7. To perform these roles, general trading houses needed many industrial engineers.

5.7 Machinery Import and Foreign Partnership

In middle to late Meiji, Japan began to expedite technology transfer by learning from imported machinery as well as through technical cooperation agreements. With a growing number of Japanese engineers, it became possible for enterprises owned and operated solely by Japanese to absorb sharply targeted foreign technologies. Some specific examples are given below.

To set up a national telephone network, engineers at the Ministry of Communications, including Oi Saitaro, a graduate of the Institute of Technology, collected publicly available technical information, visited the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany to compare their telephone systems, negotiated with foreign telephone equipment makers, and selected the kind of system suitable for Japan. Advanced equipment had to be imported, but Japanese engineers and workers laid the lines and managed operations without any foreign assistance. By comparison with the introduction of telegraph services through a turnkey contract in early Meiji, its capacity as a receiver of foreign technology had improved remarkably.

In the navy, early Meiji-era engineers trained in Britain and France, as well as shipbuilding and armaments engineers graduating from naval technical schools, were similarly instrumental. Throughout the Meiji period, the principal battleships were imported mostly from the United Kingdom, with Japanese naval shipbuilding and armaments engineers travelling to Britain as observers while state-of-the-art battleships were built and readied for delivery. This provided them with ample opportunity to learn about ship design and construction from the British navy and shipyards. Their knowledge proved invaluable to the domestic production of arms and support vessels by Japanese naval arsenals. Over time, Japan acquired capacity to build even principal ships. Private shipyards such as Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Osaka Steel Works, and Ishikawajima also gradually improved their ability to construct steel-hulled ships by importing machinery and equipment. These enterprises relied on imported steel materials and components that could not be produced domestically. Sometimes they also procured designs from Britain (Arisawa et al., 1994).

In the textile industry, the government imported ten sets of cotton spinning machinery, each equipped with 2,000 spindles, from the United Kingdom. After installing and test running the equipment at state-owned mills in Aichi, the government sold these concerns off to the private sector as ten separate cotton mills. Engineers and technicians from the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce assisted with commercialization of these factories. Graduates of the Institute of Technology, employed as master engineers, built and managed Owaribo and Miebo, two dominant mills of that early period. In the next phase, the large-scale private cotton mills of Osaka, Amagasaki, and Kanebo were built. For this, university-educated engineers designed factory plans, and travelled to the United Kingdom to purchase machinery and acquire the practical skills and technology needed (Hanai, 2000).

As these examples illustrate, technology transfer from middle Meiji onwards occurred mainly through the import of machinery and acquisition of know-how that accompanied such machinery. As Table 5.2 shows, machinery imports rose significantly throughout the Meiji period. It should also be noted that foreign machinery entered Japan at the uniform low tariff of 5 per cent imposed by the ‘unequal’ commercial treaties until Japan regained tariff rights in 1911.

Table 5.2

Machinery imports in the Meiji period (in 1,000 yen)

Source: Nihon Boeki Seiran (Japanese Statistics of International Trade), Toyo Keizai Shimposha (1935).

Note: Import of steam engines for 1883–7 does not include the value for 1883.

Alongside machinery imports, domestic production of machinery had also emerged. Not surprisingly, Japanese machinery in the Meiji period was inferior in quality to Western. Moreover, in design, nearly all machines manufactured in Japan were copies of imports. In this way Japanese producers acquired technology arduously, gradually, and through trial and error, leading in some cases to commercially viable domestic production.

The early days of electrical equipment production provide examples. Tokyo Light Company, a distributor of imported electrical machinery, tried to encourage domestic production of dynamos and light bulbs which it was procuring. The company’s Senju Power Plant test purchased dynamos from Ishikawajima Shipyard that were designed and copy produced from a catalogue under the supervision of a certain professor, but the heat they generated distorted their shape. Similarly, Miyoshi Electric Machine, a pioneer firm in electrical machinery, supplied dynamos to Kobe Light Company and tram motors to the municipality of Kyoto. In both instances the products were returned as defective. Through such failures, Japanese industries learned that they could not rely on amateur copy production and that Western technology had to be absorbed more systematically with repeated trial production until it was successfully internalized.

From the 1900s, technical cooperation agreements offered a new way of transferring relatively new technology from large foreign firms of various nationalities. In some cases, such as Japan Steel Works, Nippon Electric Company (NEC), Tokyo Electric, and Shibaura Engineering Works, these contracts included establishment of joint-stock companies between Japanese owners and the foreign firm.

Let us look at the case of steam turbine technology. This was a new technology invented in 1884 by Charles Parsons in the United Kingdom. Within a decade, the technology spread to ship engines and thermal power plants throughout the West. Meanwhile, Japanese navy yards and private shipyards were producing their own reciprocating steam engines and boilers. In 1905 the Japanese navy learned that the British navy planned to adopt steam turbines in their principal ships for increased speed. This news prompted the Japanese navy to import Curtis turbines from the United States and install them on the Ibuki and the Aki, battleships that were under construction at the time. The navy also acquired the patent for turbine technology from Curtis and encouraged Mitsubishi Shipyard to acquire the Japanese patent for Parson’s turbines. Thereafter, Mitsubishi and the Japanese navy began their own turbine production for future ships while continuing to import turbines for ships under construction. This was a complex way of technology transfer combining learning from imported products, the rights to patent execution, and copy production.

Steelmaking was an area in which the Ministry of Industry had difficulties transferring technology during the 1870s and 1880s. State-owned steel works at the (later privatized) Kamaishi Iron Mines did produce pig iron and steel with the assistance of hired foreign engineers, but the quality was not up to expected standards. By that time, the United States and Germany had improved technology greatly with open-hearth furnaces and basic oxygen furnaces which permitted the construction of large integrated mills combining iron making, steelmaking, and rolling processes. A strongly worded petition from the Japanese military urged the government to import a complete set of integrated steel mills. In 1901, the state-owned Yawata Ironworks, with technology from the German company Gutehoffnungshütte, was constructed. This was a turnkey contract consisting of commercially confidential mill design, imported machinery and equipment, and provision of German engineers and technicians. However, unlike turnkey projects in the early Meiji period, the metallurgy engineers were Japanese. Moreover, the Japanese side chose the factory site and the type of technology to be adopted, and made the decision to procure raw materials from China. When initial operations using the German technology failed, it was Japanese engineers who adjusted the technology to local conditions and enabled the mill to operate successfully (Suzuki, 2000).

The creation in 1907 of Japan Steel Works, a joint-stock company owned by Mitsui and two British companies, Armstrong and Vickers, also originated from a request by the Japanese military for domestic production of armour plating and large-calibre guns for its lead ships. In this case, equipment and know-how were entirely British, but the Japanese engineers and skilled workers, who came mostly from naval munitions factories, quickly learned and assimilated the technology transferred.

In electrical machinery, the following three historical circumstances led to the establishment of joint ventures with American firms. On the Japanese side, the revision of commercial treaties with the West around 1900, based on the principle of equal treatment of domestic and foreign nationals, permitted foreign direct investment in Japan for the first time. Furthermore, as the modified Japanese law guaranteed the patent rights of foreigners, Japanese manufacturers were no longer allowed to copy produce the latest imported goods for free. On the American side, leading electrical equipment manufacturers had adopted a strategy of manufacturing new products at overseas subsidiaries.

In 1896, the Japanese government decided to adopt the American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) system under its First National Plan to Expand Telephony. As the government intended domestic production of telephone equipment, Western Electric, which was the manufacturing arm of AT&T, first tried to form a joint venture in Japan by acquiring the stock of Oki Electric Industry. However, negotiations with Oki failed, prompting Western Electric to establish Nippon Electric Company (NEC) in 1899, holding 54 per cent of the shares. NEC was the first subsidiary of a foreign firm in Japan. Western Electric and NEC were bound by a technical cooperation agreement that gave NEC the right of sole agency in Japan and a monopoly on future patent re-execution rights. Western Electric offered technical guidance to NEC, for which the latter paid roughly 2 per cent of its sales revenue. NEC initially distributed imported telephones, then built a manufacturing plant with design and equipment imported from Western Electric, and produced telephones by using materials and processes satisfying international standards under the supervision of an American foreman. All internal documents were written in English. Thus, the products and production methods of NEC were identical to those in the United States.

In 1905, General Electric (GE), another American giant, concluded a technical cooperation agreement with Tokyo Electric which was similar to the one between Western Electric and NEC, with GE acquiring 51 per cent of Tokyo Electric’s shares. The latter had evolved from Hakunetsusha, a light-bulb manufacturer established in 1890. As the company had been unable to establish a viable production technology or compete with imported light bulbs from Germany, it sought management assistance from GE, a world leader in the industry. GE’s policy of allowing its subsidiaries to produce light bulbs under their own patents was another reason why Tokyo Electric selected GE as a business partner. Equipment and materials were imported from GE, and American engineers came to Japan to teach manufacturing methods. Tokyo Electric’s engineers were well trained and able to quickly master any frontline technology developed by GE. Unlike NEC which was newly founded, Tokyo Electric was an existing company acquired by GE as an overseas factory. But the technology transfer method was quite similar in both cases.

Business collaboration between GE and Shibaura Engineering Works in 1907 was different from the above two cases, however: it was partial and more incremental. GE acquired only 24 per cent of Shibaura’s shares while the remainder was held by Mitsui. Technical assistance was provided through patent licensing agreements, supplemented by sharing of R&D results, exchange of engineers, and access to the blueprints for production equipment. In return, Shibaura paid royalties amounting to 1 per cent of sales revenue. Mitsui opted for this technical cooperation to catch up with rapid technological advances abroad under the constraint of the Universal Patent Convention that now protected the patents of foreign manufacturers in Japan. Through this collaboration, Shibaura was able to design heavy electrical equipment by executing its rights on the GE patent and obtain new technical information through the exchange of engineers. But this did not give Shibaura a great technology leap, unlike the cases of NEC and Tokyo Electric. GE’s technology was added to Shibaura’s existing technology without fundamentally changing the character of the latter. Large dynamos continued to be imported from GE which competed with Shibaura products. This was a case of a patent licensing agreement supplemented by a purchase contract for machinery and know-how.

These cases provide examples of how the latest Western technology was introduced to Japan in the late Meiji period. Whether technical cooperation agreements entailed an acquisition of dominant shares by foreigners depended largely on the corporate strategy on the foreign side. Some transfers of technology were selective and partial while others were guided by foreigners in every respect. The latter may look like a repetition of the wholesale purchase of Western technology practised in early Meiji, but there were important differences. First, by the end of Meiji, Japan was importing frontline technologies which were simultaneously being developed and adopted in the West rather than buying common and mature technologies as in the early Meiji period. Second, the existence of competent domestic engineers and technicians allowed Japan to take a significant lead in selecting, adjusting, and internalizing imported technologies instead of remaining a passive student.

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Notes

1

Business climate and the macroeconomy of Meiji Japan are beyond the purview of this study. Suffice it to say that the Meiji government rapidly introduced a large number of Western systems including the metric standard, banking, business education, commercial law, joint-stock companies, and the stock exchange. Inflation surged in early Meiji, and it took many years for the government to settle on the type of monetary system most suitable for Japan. The Bank of Japan was created as a sole central bank in 1882 and the silver standard was replaced by the international gold standard in 1897.

2

There is a debate regarding whether the Edo society should be classified as feudal. Here, we define feudalism simply as a leader–follower relationship based on provision of land to govern. The Tokugawa shogun, wielding unrivalled power, freely allocated and reallocated land to govern to regional samurai lords (daimyo) and in turn required absolute loyalty and obedience from them.

3

Umesao’s hypothesis was first presented in a Japanese article published in 1957. He terms it an ‘ecological view’ but, as explained here, it is more concerned with Japan’s particular geography which permitted an uninterrupted social evolution. The view that Japan’s long history, especially the existence of feudalism prior to Meiji, prepared conditions for industrialization is echoed by two oriental scholars of Western origin, Karl Wittfogel (1957) and Edwin Reischauer (1978).

4

Historically, Japanese academic research had long been dominated by imported ideas of Buddhism and Chinese philosophy. In the Edo period, however, respect for and study of Japan’s ancient beliefs and literature emerged with Keichu, Kamono Mabuchi, Motoori Norinaga, and Hirata Atsutane as leading scholars. When the US Black Ships arrived in 1853, kokugaku quickly turned from academic research to the political ideology ‘respect Emperor and repel foreigners’ (sonno joi).

5

During the Edo period, the Netherlands was the only Western nation permitted to trade with Japan under the strict control of the central government and only at Nagasaki. The only other country that was granted trading rights with Japan was China. For this reason, Western technology entered Japan through Dutch books and products.

6

Technology transfer at state-run enterprises under turnkey projects proceeded on a trial-and-error basis rather than as a well-planned process. Masahide Yoshida, a former samurai serving the Edo government, recounted that he had been recruited as one of the first Japanese staff of the Telegraphic Bureau in 1869 simply because he was studying English in Yokohama. On the third day he was asked to send and receive telegrams, of which he had no previous knowledge. He somehow learned the skill but eventually chose to become an interpreter for the foreign adviser laying telegraphic cables between Tokyo and Nagasaki (Uchida, 1990).

7

In 1871, Kogaku Ryo (School of Engineering) was created within the Ministry of Industry and upgraded to a university in 1873. The university was renamed Kobu Daigakko in 1877. It was merged with the University of Science to become the Faculty of Engineering of the Tokyo Imperial University under the Ministry of Education in 1886.

In what respect was Japan's experience of industrialization closer to that of Russia than to that of the United States or Western Europe?

How did the industrialization of Russia compared to the industrialization of Japan?

What was Japan's response to industrialization?

Why was Japan successful in industrialization?